Page 54 of Royal Reluctance

“Bo said you had your reasons.”

“I did. For leaving, and for not telling him.”

I would have never imagined the king of a country to look so sympathetic. “I expect you were afraid we’d take her from you,” he says in a gentle voice.

My mouth literally drops open. “I—I did think that,” I admit.

“Understandable. I am a king, after all.”

“You’re not that kind of king,” I point out.

“Thank you for thinking so highly of me.”

I flush. “She’s everything to me. I couldn’t take the risk.”

“She’s a special little girl. Why did you leave in the first place? If you don’t mind me asking.”

It’s not like I’m being questioned by a king. Or even interrogated by my husband’s father. King Magnus seems like he really wants to know about me.

Or he’s very good at pretending.

“We were very young,” I begin. “And maybe we shouldn’t have taken that big of a step and gotten married, but we were in love.”

“I don’t question that. I’m surprised that I didn’t hear anything about it. I like to think I’m close to my children.”

“He told Queen Selene.”

The king clears his throat. “Hedid? I never heard—”

“Just before the accident. The same day. I didn’t know this until Bo told me yesterday, but it explains a lot of things.”

The king sits down behind his desk. There’s a heaviness to his shoulders that wasn’t there a moment before. “Why don’t you explain it to me?”

I take the seat opposite him, tucking my hands between my legs. I don’t think King Magnus is the type of king I need to be careful of what I say in front of but there’s always been a wariness when I talk about Bo to anyone.

“Bo thinks he was the cause of the queen’s accident,” I say simply.

Magnus sucks in his breath. “There’s no way he could have been. There was a storm, the bridge was icy…”

“You need to tell Bo that,” I urge, leaning forward. “He’s convinced that the queen was so upset to find out about our wedding that she shouldn’t have been driving, and it caused her to lose control of the car.”

Magnus covers his mouth with his hand. “No.”

“I told him it wasn’t his fault, but Bo has spent the last eight years thinking it is. And once he told me, it explained everything. The days after the accident, he shut down. He wouldn’t talk to me. He didn’t want to see me. For four days, I didn’t know where he was. I was frantic. I couldn’t get hold of Spencer and no one else knew about us—”

Even after so long, my eyes are damp just thinking about those days. How worried I had been about Bo. The entire country was in mourning, but all I cared about was one man who seemed to have disappeared.

“They went out on a boat,” Magnus says quietly. “Bo, and Spencer, Kalle and Gunnar. They were gone for three days. I thought it was a good idea, but I didn’t know. Odin stayed with me, and Lyra…” He takes another deep breath. “It wasn’t a good time for any of us.”

“I can only imagine.”

“But he came back.” He gestures for me to continue.

“He was different. It was like he was frozen. He wouldn’t talk to me, didn’t want to see me. I couldn’t… I couldn’t.” I bite my lip. “Finally, he called, wanted to talk to me. We met at the high school, and he said—”

I don’t want to repeat what Bo said. The words have been burned into my mind, but it still hurts too much to say them out loud. “He said we made a mistake. That we never should have gotten married.”

Magnus makes a noise in his throat I take as sympathy, so I continue. “I didn’t know how to get through to him. He was a wall.”

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